Did You Know...

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a column on the War on Cops — reviewing the past year of violence against police officers and the cultural war that has been waged against them for the past several decades.

Two sheriff’s officers responding to a dispute between two brothers were ambushed by one of the brothers lying in wait with a gun after being welcomed into the home by the other, authorities said. The gunman was killed and the officers were seriously wounded.

The shooting is the third in three months in which authorities say a gunman has taken aim at law enforcement officials in Washington state.

Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said a sergeant and a deputy were shot about 8:45 p.m. Monday while responding to a dispute between David E. Crable and his brother near Eatonville, a rural community in the Cascade foothills.

Crable, 35, shot the two officers before he was killed when they returned fire, Troyer said. The names of the officers were not immediately released.

The officers were greeted at the door by Crable’s brother, while Crable was in the house arming himself, Troyer said. When the deputies entered the house, Crable opened fire from upstairs, hitting one of the officers multiple times.

“This is somebody that was laying in wait for our guys, armed themselves, with the intent on shooting them,” Troyer told reporters near the shooting scene. “There’s not much we’re going to be able to do when somebody is hiding and arming themselves and we have somebody else inviting us into the residence and the second person opens fire on us.”

The shooting comes less than a month after the deadliest attack on law-enforcement in Washington’s history, when four police officers from Lakewood in Pierce County were shot to death on Nov. 29 by career criminal and police-hater Maurice Clemmons.